NEWS.

Ballet Babies

Three Little Boys Win Hearts On Stage As Dancer-mothers Head For Class

June 19, 1994|By Carol Lawson, New York Times News Service.

NEW YORK — The no-nonsense stagehands at the Metropolitan Opera House did a double take on a recent Friday morning. A strange sound, not attributable to any known composer, drifted through the air. It was the lyrical giggles of small children.

"Hey," one of the men shouted in a Bronx bellow, "The Babies are here."

Work stopped. The stagehands put down their hammers and saws. Their faces softened into broad smiles as the Babies, as this trio of lively little boys is known throughout the Met, glided across the great stage in the arms of their mothers, three dancers with American Ballet Theater.

Ballet and babies do not have much common history in this country. Indeed, when the great Natalia Makarova became pregnant several years ago, her fans and fellow dancers alike were shocked and fearful: Would she ever be strong enough to dance "Swan Lake" again? Would she ever be thin enough to wear a tutu?

Even though Makarova and some other ballerinas, including Cynthia Gregory, resumed dancing after giving birth, the notion of a dancing mother is still an oddity in the ballet world. At American Ballet Theater, the news that not one but three dancers were pregnant at the same time came as a shock.

"They said it had to be something in the water," said Cheryl Yeager, a principal ballerina, whose son, Noah Marshall, was born Sept. 4, 1992. Christine Dunham, also a principal, quickly followed with the birth of her son, Zachary Zembower, on Sept. 12. Lucette Katerndahl, a soloist, gave birth to her son, Brooks Besson, Oct. 19.

The three ballerinas carried their sons into a mirrored rehearsal hall where the company's daily class was to begin promptly at 11 a.m. But for now, the Babies had the expansive gray floor to themselves.

Their mothers juggled rattles, pacifiers, bottles of milk and jars of mushy bananas and carrots as they tried to keep the babies happy while conducting a grownup conversation.

Whenever the distractions failed, the ballet moms resorted to singing nursery rhymes such as "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and even dancing with the infants, holding them upright on the floor in wobbly pas de deux.

The desire to have a child was so strong, the ballerinas said, that it completely overtook career considerations. "For the past couple of years I was craving to have a baby, and suddenly the feeling was overwhelming," said Dunham, 35. "Two weeks later I was pregnant."

Yeager, 36, said: "When you start trying, you don't know what will happen-dancers are so thin. But all three of us got pregnant right away, boom, boom, boom, thank God."

Yeager and Dunham continued performing into the third month of their pregnancies. Katerndahl, who dances less demanding character roles, played the Queen in "The Sleeping Beauty" and the Queen Mother in "Swan Lake" until she was 5 1/2 months pregnant, her bulge well concealed under voluminous, floor-length gowns.

"Every week they had to add another patch to my costumes," said Katerndahl, 37.

Once the ballerinas stopped performing, they continued taking daily classes as long as they could move. "I stopped at seven months," Dunham said. "My hands and feet were swollen. I was too uncomfortable."

The three moms-to-be were quite a sight in class, she said. "Other dancers were horrified."

While the babies' arrivals were filled with joy, the weeks that followed were not. "Getting into shape was the worst," Dunham said. "Everything was gone."

Katerndahl agreed: "Nothing was in working order. I looked eight months pregnant two months after the birth."

Katerndahl began rebuilding her body with an exercise regimen for strengthening the abdomen. Dunham and Yeager, who had Caesarean sections, started with ballet class and added abdominal exercises later, after they had recovered fully from surgery. The two also hired a pianist and rehearsed parts of ballets together in a studio.

"It was a lot of hard work," Yeager said.

The ballerinas said that while they were breast-feeding, they could not diet. But losing weight was not their great concern.

"Getting back into shape was much tougher than losing weight," Yeager said.

Whenever things looked bleak, she called Lourdes Lopez, a ballerina with the New York City Ballet and the mother of a 4-year-old daughter.

"I was 30 pounds overweight, had no sleep and was totally overwhelmed," Yeager said. "Lourdes talked me through it. She would say, `You're doing great.' She was my inspiration. And since I was first, I passed on what she said to Christine and Lucette."

The ballerinas rejoined the company in March 1994, when rehearsals began for the spring season at the Met. The dancers' contract with American Ballet Theater has no provision for a maternity leave, said Gary Dunning, executive director of Ballet Theater.